Here Now: Kevlar Vests for Elementary School Students

The headline in the Daily Mail is a grabber:

Stab-proof school uniforms go on sale to protect pupils from knife attacks

Parents are sending children to school in stab-proof uniforms to guard against knife crime, it has emerged.

They are paying a firm which makes body armour to line blazers and jumpers with a stab-resistant material called Kevlar.

The precautions are aimed at protecting pupils from knife attacks as street crime spills over into schools.

According to a spokesman for the manufacturer, BladeRunner

From what I can gather and from speaking to parents it's just peace of mind for them.

I spoke to a lady yesterday whose son was mugged on a bus coming home from school. She has also got two daughters, but she always sends them to school with no money on them and no jewellery.

Further

Teachers are also demanding to be equipped with stab-proof vests to protect them from attack as they frisk pupils for knives and guns.

Just a regular day in another Gun Free Zone, where everyone is equal or at least equally safe. This time, though, its England, where possession of firearms is banned, as is public possession of a knife, and where the violent crime rate now exceeds that of its former colony.

We should be assured, however, that

The reality of course is that crimes involving knives are proportionately very very low

according to the spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, whose name is almost indescribably fitting, he being one Alf Hitchkock.

Of course, these are not kitchen paring knives.

No, they are the "assault weapon" version of your typical bread slicer, just the sight of which is enough to push a pretty heavy load of adrenaline through one's system.

While reported street robberies have increased from 25,500 in 2005 to more than 64,000 in just the first four months of this year, the constabulary is clueless. Enver Soloman, deputy director of the London-based Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, who may be living in a different universe entirely, said:

“There is no doubt there are more kids carrying knives but it is not clear why.

“Much of it is for personal safety rather than for putting it against someone’s throat.”

Others suggested increasing the penalty for carrying a knife in public "without a good reason" from two years to four.

We seem to have difficulty understanding that by "tooling down" society, we weaken the law abiding and strengthen the lawless.

The outcome is both natural and unpleasant to contemplate.

You really can't make this stuff up.

Heck, instead of Kevlar, let's just issue everyone—the good, the bad as well as the ugly—a Glock and let God play His role.

Terrorists in America Switching to "Plan B"?

The Department of Homeland Security has refined its analysis of the domestic threat posed by al Qaeda. DHS now believes that the terror network in America will emphasize a larger number of quick hit-and-run strikes rather than the more spectacular but infrequent attacks favored by Osama bin Laden.

Examples of the "new" approach they fear include this week's attempted car-bombing of London nightclubs and the Glasgow airport.

According to a recent report by Robert Block in The Wall Street Journal, How Terrorists' Goals May Be Melding, government security specialists worry that al Qaeda will "encourage local Muslims to join their jihad and kill however they can," while "(a)t the same time, their chief planners continue to plan and work for 'the big one.'"

Block points out, "Mr. Zarqawi rose to prominence in Iraq by carrying out a sustained campaign of simple attacks against lightly defended targets."

According to an unclassified DHS report, Speculating on an al-Zarqawi Campaign against the Homeland,

"They (Zarqawi-type targets) do not require experienced operatives and can be planned and executed in a matter of days or weeks, versus years. His targets are ones of opportunity—accessible and vulnerable—and his methods of attacks include suicide car bombings, improvised explosive device attacks, kidnappings and assassinations."

Block wrote,

"(The DHS report) said if Mr. Zarqawi were to lead attacks against the U.S., the campaigns would likely involve fewer operatives, shorter planning time lines and focus on soft targets. The plots would, by their very nature, 'be more difficult to detect during the planning stages and more difficult to prevent during the execution stages.'"

Block asks whether DHS resources should continue to focus on potential catastrophic attacks or should they refocus on the "more likely attacks on, for example, shopping malls using a homemade gasoline bomb or legally purchased firearms?" (emphasis added)

The challenges that this change creates for our existing protective structure are obvious. According to the Los Angeles deputy police chief for counterterrorism, Michael Downing,

"The need to disrupt an ever-wider range of plots, and to investigate suspects who at first might ony seem peripheral, puts a major strain on our resources."

Too many government workers have succumbed to the temptation to engineer an American Maginot Line, a static defense built around government responders, who despite their best planning and intentions will almost always arrive too late for anything but recovering the bodies.

We've seen over and over again that victims who rely on others for defense can suffer horrific losses. Virginia Tech comes to mind, where a single gunman with neither support nor sophistication was able to kill dozens before taking his own life. Or the Columbine disaster, where two teenagers killed or wounded nearly three dozen students and a teacher in just 16 minutes and then strutted through their conquered kingdom for half an hour before, again, ending their lives.

Contrast those cases with the Appalachian School of Law shootings, where the death toll was held to three when two students retrieved a gun and ended the carnage. Or, the Trolley Square rampage by a Muslim teenager, where five were killed before an off-duty, out of uniform police officer from a different jurisdiction ended a Valentine's Day date with his wife and the killers spree by drawing a concealed handgun and confronting the teenage shooter.

Only rarely amongst the mass killings in the last ten years has on-duty police caused the end of the killing. Termination has been either a) at the hand of the killer, or b) through the intervention of civilians.

It is unrealistic to expect that any government, no matter how effective, will be able to protect all of America's soft targets. The federal Transportation Safety Administration currently spends $6B annually to protect fewer than 600 airports around the nation, or about $11 million per target. That's larger than the total budget of most elementary and secondary schools and would impose an unsustainable stress on most malls, sports stadiums, cathedrals and other major terror opportunities.

Israel has had to deal with terror attacks for almost four decades and they've found a combination of steps that have very substantially reduced both the frequency and the severity of internal terrorist attacks:

• They've secured their borders.
• They've hardened their targets.
• They've educated their civilians on what to watch for.
• They've armed their civilians and encouraged them to take responsibility for their own safety.

Can we, should we, do less?

I suspect that DHS and Block are right, that the next series of attacks within the U. S. will be small scale, ad hoc, and appear to be amateurish. As was Virginia Tech. As was Columbine.

For that matter, so was the shooting at Los Angeles International Airport, the attempted bombing at the University of Oklahoma and the massacre at the undefended offices of the Jewish Federation of Seattle.

We can pray that we'll learn quickly that while once may be an accident, twice is a problem and three times is a pattern.

I'm reminded of one of the attacks in Israel a few years ago, where an Arab terrorist was shot dead by an Israeli shopper.

"How did you know you weren't shooting an innocent man?"
"He sizzled."
"Excuse me?"
"He tried to self-detonate. There was a malfunction. I saw smoke. I didn't want to take a chance on there being a second trigger. We were in a supermarket. Women and children all around. I drew and and shot him in the chest."

Or, another one, in Jerusalem:

"(A) shoe salesman was eating dinner with his wife in a Jerusalem nightclub, when a terrorist opened fire with an automatic firearm. William Hazan grabbed a pistol out of his wife's purse and shot the Palestinian, thus ending the terror. The gunman had explosives strapped to his body, but was effectively prevented from detonating the devices."

The day will soon come when we in the U.S. tell similar stories. The folks who are most likely to make the difference, to prevent horrific loss of life, are the citizens who have learned from 9-11, who accept that more than three is a pattern and understand that the police can't possibly get there fast enough.

They are less likely to become victims themselves and by doing so, will help you and I as well.

What about you? Shouldn't you be helping out?

Related Links: "Experts" Hawk Old Answers on Campus Security
Is Virginia Tech Education's "9/11"?

Fred Thompson as Vice President?

The folks over at NRO Corner have a bit of a debate going on whether Fred Thompson is serious when he denies any interest in the VP slot.

Thompson's own words seem pretty straightforward:

"I have no interest in running for or being the vice president."

Fred points out a significant distinction between himself and the other candidates: They've been running for President forever. He hasn't.

There's not much room for doubt, or equivocation in what he says or the way he says it. Perhaps even conservatives have become too complacent about "looking behind the curtain" of what a candidate says for what a candidate means. After all, they've not been able to take a candidate's words literally since Ronald Reagan.

To those who think Fred Thompson is just another candidate, who doesn't mean what he says about his ambition, let's remember that he is already a rarity in that regard.


Fred Thompson voluntarily walked away from "the most exclusive club" in the world, and he never looked back.

Related Links:
Fred to Midgets
Supporting Cast
Reagan's Mantle
Fred Takes VT to Task

"Experts" Hawk Old Answers on Campus Security

Experts contacted by the Associated Press offer advice from a bygone era to today's college students who wonder about campus security in the aftermath of the massacre at Virginia Tech.

Amazingly, students are told to follow the same ineffective guidelines as in the past. It's almost like a doctor recommending to a patient the placebo over the medicine:

How good is the on-campus mental counseling and how many students are using it?

The AP notes that about 13% of all students and an impressive 25% of liberal arts students use mental health services, but doesn't address whether such numbers should reassure students or drive them to look elsewhere.

The killer at VT was a participant in such a program. Didn't help.

Look at campus crime statistics.

The AP offers the helpful thought that "in some categories, a high number isn't necessarily a bad thing." Nor is a low number necessarily a good thing.

Virginia Tech was a particularly peaceful campus until the day it wasn't. Didn't help.

Think about security on a campus visit.

Do rooms have deadbolts?

Don't worry if they don't, the shooter at VT brought his own. Didn't help.

Get information on the campus police force.

The AP suggests that students ask whether the campus police force is accredited by the Commission of Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, and that if so the student can take some comfort.

The campus police at Virginia Tech are one of 39 with such accreditation. Didn't help.

Ask about emergency communications.

The AP acknowledges the limits of technology here, that emails, IM and texting are not the complete answers and suggests consideration of sirens.

Those campuses that kept their 1950's air raid sirens, emergency rations and wardens will be on the fast track here. Getting the victims all together in one place will cut down on the wasted time.

Finally, the one recommendation that AP didn't make is the one that is proven to be the single most effective for personal security and for reduced violent crime.


For that, students and their parents need to ask:

Are legally armed civilians, professors and administrators allowed to have their personal firearms on campus? Or, like Virginia Tech and the University of Washington the month before, are the bad guys the only ones that can?

The evidence is indisputable that school and other Gun Free Zones attract killers and that including civilians in the equation of their own security significantly improves the odds of never having to act defensively. Bad guys go where their odds are best. Too often today, that means a school.

For the one state where the answer is an unequivocal Yes to student protection and where campus rampages are unknown, check out Utah.

VT Killer Lied to Buy Gun

ABC News reports that a Virginia court had found that the Virginia Tech killer was mentally ill and potentially dangerous in 2005, and that the state then let him go.

Question 12 f on the Treasury form that the killer had to certify in order to purchase at least one of his guns last month asks,

"Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective (which includes being adjudicated incompetent to manage your own affairs) or have you ever been committed to a mental institution?"

"No" is the only acceptable answer for that question on that form. Leaving it blank or answering "Yes" will result in a turndown. It should also result in prosecution for illegally attempting to purchase a firearm, a felony, but it almost never does. The Clinton administration bragged about the thousands of illegal purchases, but said nothing about any prosecutions of those felons.

The area just above the signature on Form 4473 reads in part, in bold:

• I certify that the above answers are true and correct.
• I understand that making any false oral or written statement… with respect to this transaction… is a crime punishable as a felony.

While earthly felonies no longer trouble this murderer, there may be lessons to learn here. Most shooters will not object to including notice of mental health commitments to the existing instantaneous criminal checks accomplished before a purchase.

But I bet others will.

Is Virginia Tech Education's "9/11"?

Adults of a certain age will remember what we were told for 25 years about how to behave in the event of an airline hijacking. The training was similar for the aircrews:

• Don't draw attention to yourself.
• Don't look the bad guys in the eye.
• Cooperate.
• Don't resist.

That approach to airline passenger safety, passive non-resistance, died along with the passengers on United 93, who sacrificed themselves so that thousands of others might live. Those passengers, armed with the information that they were most likely not to be hostages but were destined for sacrifice on the altar of Evil, rebelled against both the hijackers and their government's instructions. They chose not be be passive, not to cooperate. They grabbed the fighting tools they could from a weapons-free cabin and fought. Their goal was not sacrifice but victory. Even fighting an enemy who by then held all the advantages, their victory changed history. It also changed the way we look at forceful takeovers in the air. There has no been a hijacking since. As long as passengers are vigilant there will not be another.

The first indisputable lesson from VT is similar: Too often we saw that of the students and faculty in the line of fire yesterday, those who didn't actively resist faced an executor at close range. Those who fought back, even marginally, or who were beneficiaries of others who fought back on their behalf, lived.

Whether Evil stalks an airplane aisle or an university hallway, the lesson remains the same: Help will never arrive in time, your life is yours to protect or to lose.

One of the victims of yesterday's two murders and the following massacre at Virginia Polytechnic Institute remembered how he had been taught from kindergarten to 12th grade,

"Don't think about resisting. Don't fight. Wait for help.

I felt like a sitting duck. I was a sitting duck. Helpless."

Mass murderers are different from "ordinary" killers, in that mass murderers are easier to dissuade and redirect than those whose focus is on a particular victim. It is a key distinction. They are indifferent as to the exact identity of their victims. Door stuck? Guy with a baseball bat or knife in the way? Oh well, the next doorway down the hall will do just as well.

One of the true heroes of the day, a child of the Holocaust, had learned his lesson then. Professor Liviu Librescu offered all the resistance his 76-year old body could muster when he threw himself against the classroom door, shutting it against the killer. That effort, as limited by his age and slight stature as it might have been, was enough to save Professor Librescu's entire class. Professor Librescu, who survived the Holocaust and lived to fight another day, finally gave his life so that others may live.

Another class was saved in a similar manner by a single student who pushed a classroom table against the door, blocking it. Evil walked by. Because the mass murderer really doesn't care who his next victim is, even minimal resistance will very often cause him to redirect his rampage, until he finally turns it against himself.


We will never be able to sufficiently harden all the vulnerable targets in our neighborhoods. It is an impossible task. By making it our first priority we too often send a counterproductive message, as we have with our schools. Better to harden our people, completely changing the geometry of the mass murderers' risk/reward equation.

Our schools do our students a disservice by teaching them how to be good victims. Elementary, middle and high schools would do better by their students, teachers and our society by instructing young people to resist, to defend themselves within their abilities. More of our students and teachers would fight back and make the killers' tasks more difficult if we were to teach them that sometimes violence is the better choice.

We'll lose fewer students, we'll have fewer mass killings when we teach ourselves and our children to start acting more and cowering less.

UPDATE: Moe Lane at Red State posted a noble sentiment about Professor Liviu Librescu, which I'd like to quote in its entirety:

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
'To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods…'

PS: As for his murderer… I know his name, but will not write it. -- Moe Lane

I will follow Lane's examply as I continue to write on the lessons of Virginia Tech.

UPDATE: James Bowman sees it the same way in a forcefully written piece on the i-Pod generation in We Need More Heroes in National Review Online.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin jumps on board with Wanted: A Culture of Self-Defense.

UPDATE: Now, this is more like it! This saved lives. H/T Rich Lowry at NRO.

UPDATE: Marc Danziger at Examiner.com is asking the central question: Whether we should be Teaching a New Doctrine in Light of the Virginia Tech Massacre?